


Ghosts of Our Past

by QueenUndertheBloodyMountain



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Implied Violence, Josh Lives, Mild Gore, Psychotic Hallucinations, Psychotic break, Reader-Insert, Sadness, Wendigo Josh, Wendigo!Josh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 11:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5705818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenUndertheBloodyMountain/pseuds/QueenUndertheBloodyMountain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'll always be there to protect him, even if you aren't <em>really</em> there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of Our Past

**Author's Note:**

> The song that inspired this story was Your Guardian Angel by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus; if you listen to it while you read, you'll probably be able to get into the mindset I was in when writing this. Also, there is a second version of this for all Until Dawn fans that aren't fans of reader-inserts but are a fan of Climbing Class.

_“Josh stop; you’re just going to make it worse!”_ you plead. 

“You’re not real,” he growled, claw-tipped fingers clutching his head as he shook himself, like a dog flinging water, “Not real, not real, not real…”

_“So freaking wendigos can be real, but ghosts can’t?”_ you laughed, voice like a bell ringing in his ears. 

He looked up at you; you had died in the clothes you were wearing the night of the prank, the second night in his life where everything had gone wrong. Bloodstained jeans, a torn, white undershirt, one of his flannels overtop; all just painfully human things that you had loved to wear, that you had died in. But you stood before him, barefoot in a white sundress, the kind you wore when he asked you on that date so long ago. It seemed like it was a lifetime away now. But sometimes, the blood still seeped into the dress; your gaping middle literally bleeding into what he thought must have been his new reality.

“I killed you…”

_“But I forgave you.”_

“You aren’t real!” he screamed.

 _“I’m as real as you are Josh, just a little less physical,”_ you sighed, blood starting to stain your stomach again. This was when his delusions got really bad; pretty soon he’d start seeing his sisters—hear them blaming him for what had happened them, and rightfully blaming him about what he had done to you…

“You shouldn’t be here, you don’t belong here, stuck with me,” he mumbled, holding his head again.

**_“Ooh, poor little Joshy,”_ Hannah taunted, _“pouting and feeling sorry for himself, even now.”_**

**_“Of course; he got to live after what he did to us, but he’s the victim now.”_ Beth sneered.**

Their flesh was rotting, eyes milky and blank, bones and muscles showing through in places, like they always were. The sight of them always made Josh’s stomach turn, bile coming up to push through the new row of teeth—fangs—trying to rip through his gums.

_“Don’t listen to them Josh,”_ you begged, kneeling beside him, _“They’re only a delusion that your brain is trying to make you believe. Beth and Hannah would never say these things to you. They loved you.”_

“I failed them,” Josh whimpered.

The twins laughed harshly behind her.

_“No Josh, nobody failed them but the others. They failed as friends and that’s what caused everything to break. It was not your fault.”_

“I miss you,” he cried, salty tears sliding down his cheeks and stinging the open wound across his cheek and face, “I miss all of you.”

Hannah and Beth kept taunting him in the background, but he was focusing more on the ghost beside him, his sisters’ voices, and silhouette’s, fading quickly as his mind clung to the idea of the woman within touching distance.

_“I know Josh, but you have to hold on, they’re coming for you, to rescue you. You just have to be strong; I’ll be right here with you.”_

“I don’t deserve to be saved!” he screamed again, claws ripping into his scalp and face with his outburst. “You deserved to be saved,” he whispered again, fresh tears rolling down his face, “And where were they?! They abandoned you to this! To me!”

_“No Josh,”_ you whispered, hand ghosting over his back in a caress he could never feel. _“I came looking for you, myself. I wasn’t going to leave you here. I was just too late…”_

“You shouldn’t have come at all,” he whined, throat fighting the human words that weren’t coming as naturally to him anymore.

_“Josh look at me,”_ you pleaded; his eyes flicked over to the darkened figure sprawled on the floor across the room. 

_“I said look at me, not that lifeless lump of flesh.,”_ you snapped, pulling his gaze back to your face. _“Joshua Washington, I loved you with all of my heart when I was alive, and I will love you will all of my soul for…well whatever this is. You were my best friend and person I loved more than anyone or anything in the world; there was no way in Heaven or Hell I was going to just abandon you to these godforsaken mines without at least trying to find you.”_

“But…” his eyes flickered back towards the figure.

_“No,”_ you said, a finality in your tone he always knew so well, _“I was never going to abandon you to this, not without trying to find you. I do not regret my choices, even now.”_

“I love you.”

You smiled, brushing an unfelt kiss over his temple, _“I know, and now you get to prove it to me by holding on.”_

“Onto what?”

_“Your humanity.”_

**~~Three Days Later~~**

“He’s pretty dehydrated, and obviously he’s a bit out of it—tried to take a chunk out of a few of our guys’ a few times—but we think he’ll be ok; especially once we get him to some people that really know what they’re doing. He’s going to be ok Chris; thanks to you.” Mr. Washington said, pulling Chris into the tightest bear hug he’d ever experienced.

“And…was there?...”Chris asked, glancing between Mr. and Mrs. Washington both, fearing the answer.

Mrs. Washington pressed her lips together, tears gathering in her eyes again, “They found another body in the mines…at first he wouldn’t let them near it when they tried to see who it was, but once they had a hold on him they were finally able to see…”

“We’re so sorry Chris; it seems that…that he may have attacked her and torn an artery in her abdomen. She died quickly though, they think. The cold may have slowed down the bleeding, but it was pretty quick. And…” Mr. Washington hesitated, glancing at his wife before pushing on, “And all the…bite marks…were made after she died. Some were human-shaped, and a lot of them weren’t; but they were just bites. It’s as if—“

“As if he couldn’t bring himself to do that to her.” Chris finished. It seemed, even as a starving, crazed almost-wendigo, Josh Washington still couldn’t quite bring himself to destroy one of the few people left he would have given his life for.

“What now then?” Chris asked, wiping the tears quickly off his face, “What do we do from here?”

“From here, we bury her, and we help him heal, as best we can. We get him fixed up, and we try and help him cope and try to move on from all of this.” Mr. Washington said, wrapping an arm around his wife and pulling her into his side.

“It’s what she would have wanted Chris.” Mrs. Washington added, reaching out and grabbing Chris’ hand, squeezing it once in reassurance and sympathy.

“Yea,” he mumbled, heart breaking open for the loss of another friend, but so much relief and joy with having managed to save another. He felt the coolest brush of a breeze on his cheek, “Yea, that’s exactly what she would have wanted.”

_**-FIN-** _


End file.
